Chris Saunders: the hero next door: a remembrance and a revisit

I wrote this appreciation to Chris Saunders last year. Tomorrow, the 21st of September, will mark the day we lost Chris. Before he passed, I spent many hours with him talking baseball, politics, but the most special discussion was his demand that I tell him the complete plot to my new novel Meet Me at Moonlight Beach. He loved writing and was a wonderful wizard with words. Chris insisted on introducing me to his friends as "the author, Bob Pacilio." I wish he could have wrapped his fingers around the novel that he listened to in his hospital bed. The novel is dedicated to him.

For thirty two years, I taught about fictional heroes, but for the last three years a real hero lived next door. My neighbor Chris Saunders passed away on September 21, 2017, and yesterday hundreds of folks came to honor him and his family. It was gut wrenching. It was inspiring. It was courageous. It was nostalgic. But above all, it communicated one simple truth. Chris was a hero.

To the thousands of students I taught, you may remember Chris as a channel 8 news reporter for twenty years. Perhaps these pictures will sharpen that recollection of him.  I am writing this for you and for all those folks out there in the ‘cloud’ who may not know that a person like Chris Saunders can bring out the hero in YOU.

I will not make an attempt to equal the eloquence of those who spoke of him. No one could bear witness to Chris’s heroics more than his daughters; Juliet and Hillary. Theirs was a bedtime story told of a father who transcended what is usually expected of fatherhood. One knows deep in our souls that a child’s most important teachers are parents, and the greatest of those parents make it their sacred duty to have their children evolve to a higher level of consciousness and spirituality than they have. That was a tall order for these young women, but Juliet’s and Hillary’s words spoke volumes of what Chris taught them.

Chris was never alone in this endeavor. Courage takes on many forms, but his wife of forty years, Marsha, embodied exactly that courage as she faced the cancer that took her soulmate’s life. The Celebration of His Life was her tribute to a man who promised to always and forever walk with her, hand in hand.

He loved the truth and he told the truth in every endeavor. Those of us who knew him, even briefly, heard the stories of his reporting with the Innocence Project, and the people he helped get out of the prison. Prejudice and ignorance were often the causes; however, he spoke truth to power. More importantly, he lived his truth. When Chris Saunders said he would do something, he did it to the best of his abilities.

Chris loved music. He could play any guitar and in the

words of Bruce Springsteen “make it talk.”

He always made us laugh…even when his pain was unendurable.

Today, I ask each of us to continue to follow his lead: listen, be kind, sing your song, stand up for what is right because it is right, read to your children, and love family unconditionally. Nothing would make Chris happier. And that, my friends, is what heroes do. Even when the chips are down, they never stop believing in YOU.

So yesterday “there were teardrops on the city”—today, we try to make a difference.

Imagine that.